The Moz Blog

11 Google Analytics Tricks to Use for Your Website

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community.The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not
reflect the views of Moz.

Do you know what is the most common question that I get every day on social media, forums or email?

"How to get insights about my Google Analytics data?" People approach me saying that they have a Google Analytics account for years, but they look only at page views or the number of visitors they get.

And this is wrong, this is so wrong when they have powerful free Web Analytics tools that they can leverage to learn more about their visitors and use those insights to better serve their visitors.

That is why in this article I am going to tell you some Google Analytics tricks that you should use for your website.

You can get the basics from my Google Analytics course, but right now I am going to take this one step further to help you get even more insights from Google Analytics.

Now, if you don't use the latest version of Google Analytics, login into your account and click the [New Version] link from the top right corner of your screen before we get started.

This way I can be sure that you use the latest Google Analytics interface and you can follow this article along.

1. Setup Goals

Something that it's quite a straight forward process, it's actually neglected by the majority of people and this is the fact that after you install the tracking code on your website you need to setup goals.

The goals you setup for your website are the foundation of your website analysis because everything gravitates around your goals and conversion rates, the goals that are ultimately your business goals.

If you are wondering what goals you need to setup, start by asking yourself what is the purpose of your website. Is it an eCommerce site and you want to sells tangible goods, is it a blog where you want to make revenue from ads, do you sell eBooks or services? What is the main purpose of your site?

Then, once you figure this out you can go and start setting up goals base on your business objectives.

If this is still unclear for you, here are some examples that will give you traction:

Subscriptions - check how the visitors who subscribe to your list behave

Purchases - if you sell eBooks or courses you can get insights about your buyers

Later, these goals will help you track conversion rates and get insights about what are the main traffic sources that send you visitors which convert, what are the keywords who send you customers, which page your visitor use most to signup for your newsletter, where are your customers from and examples can continue.

Use these examples to get started, but please note that every website is unique and it will have unique goals.

2. Connect your Google Webmaster Tools account

Google Webmaster Tools is another free product from Google which helps you see data about your website such as the number of impressions for your search queries and their position in Google, the number of links to your site or diagnosis information reported by Google after crawling your website.

Additionally, you can check +1 metrics, your site performance or submit a sitemap for Google to index.

But what the really interesting thing is the fact that you can connect your Google Webmaster Tools account with your Google Analytics account and get access to the new Search Engine Optimization reports.

Once you do that, you will be able to see three new reports in your Google Analytics account: Queries, Landing Pages and Geographical Summary. They will help you learn more about your top performing search queries (keywords) and landing pages.

Then, you can use that data to identify:

Keywords with a low click through rate, but a good average position. Once you know them, you can change the meta title and description of your page to improve their click through rate.

Landing pages with a good click through rate, but a low average position. These pages can be easily run through an on-page optimization process that will improve their rankings.

What are the countries of your organic visitors and who your target market is.

To connect your site from Google Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics, go to the [Traffic Sources] section, select [Search Engine Optimization] and then one of the three reports.

At this stage you will see a page with the benefits of linking your accounts and a button where it says [Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing]. Click that button and then click [Edit] from the [Webmaster Tools Settings].

Then, you will be redirected to your Google Webmaster Tools where you can connect it with Google Analytics.

3. Enable Site Speed

Site speed is also a neat feature of Google Analytics that lets you see the load time of your pages. This will help you check what pages need your attention and determine you to look for ways of speeding up the load time of your pages.

If you wonder why this is important, I can tell you that the load speed of your pages can significantly improve your visitors experience on your site and it's also a ranking factor in Google.

So a good load speed can make your visitors happy and can also increase your rankings.

Along with the number of Page Views and Bounce Rate, you can see the Average Page Load Time (in seconds) and the number of visits that have been used as a sample for every page on your website.

Additionally, if you click on the [Performance] tab, you can check different buckets of your page load time and see what is the average load speed of your pages.

The [Map Overlay] will show you what is the load speed for different countries or territories.

If before you needed to add an additional code to your Google Analytics tracking, now that is no longer required and Google Analytics will automatically add data to your reports.

4. Enable Site Search

It's a fact that visitors who use the search box on your site are more likely to convert than the ones who don't. The reason why this happens is because they are more engaged with your website, with your content or your products and services.

The beautiful thing about site search is that it lets you discover the exact keywords that people use to search for your products, so you can take this a step further and use them in your search engine optimization campaigns.

You can actually use the most important keywords that people use to search on your site to optimize your pages and drive more targeted traffic to your website.

Additionally, they might look for products or services that you do not have on your offer, but you can add them with little effort and increase your sales.

Or if you have a blog, site search is a great way to see what your readers are looking for and get a ton of article ideas out of them.

If you would like to enable site search on your website, first make sure that you have a search form on your site and then enable Site Search in Google Analytics.

5. Track Events

Event tracking is a powerful feature in Google Analytics that can help you track among others:

How many people download your eBook

What ads are performing better and who clicks on your ads

Which signup form converts better (sidebar, below the post, about page)

Who pauses, fast forward or stops a video

What errors a visitor encounters during the checkout

But that is not all. Using the latest version of Google Analytics, you are also able to set these events as goals which can help you see the performance of your events based on different metrics.

Enabling event tracking it's not a hard process. All you have to do is just add the code below next to your URL, before you replace the default values.

These default values will help you identify your events and here's what they represent:

Category – You can use this element to identify what you want to track: eBook, video, signup form, ads.

Action – This element can be used to define the interaction of your visitor and can be: click, button, play, stop. Personally, I use it to specify the place of my button/signup form/ad.

Label – Use this to identify the type of event that is tracked.

Value – This element helps you specify a value for you event that can be used when you setup a goal for your event.

If you would like to see a working example, here's what I used to track a link to my new product, where "Ads" is the category of my link, "Sidebar" the place where I added the link and "WAB" the label.

Then once you setup your links, all you have to do is just setup that event as a goal, using the Category, Action, Label, and Value conditions you have setup for your event.

6. Real-Time Reporting

Google has taken analytics one step further recently and introduced Real-Time Reporting, which displays information about visitors that are on your website in a specific moment.

Your are able to see how many visitors are on your website in that moment, where they are on your website, from where they come (keywords and referrals) and where they live.

Additionally, you have access to another 3 reports with more insights about their location, how they arrived on your website and what pages they visit.

To access the real-time reports you need to go to the [Home] menu > [REAL-TIME (BETA)].

The [Locations] report will provide you information about the number of your visitors and the countries where they are located. You can also check their location on a map.

[Traffic Sources] will display information about where they come from. You will see the medium and source along with the total number of your visitors.

The [Content] report will show you what are the active pages that your visitors read and how many active visitors are on each of the pages displayed on your report.

7. Multi-Channel Funnels

With Multi-Channel Funnels Google Analytics provides even more value for users who are passionate about conversion rates.

If before you were able to track the last source that the visitor used to convert, with Multi-Channel Funnels you are able to also track other sources (ads, referrals, social media, organic) that the visitor used to reach your website from.

Let's say for example that your visitor (Cindy) landed for the first time on your website from Twitter and subscribed to your RSS feed.

Next time, Cindy used the feed reader to come and read your new articles. Ultimately she was looking for advice on blogging and found your eBook using a search engine.

Now, because she knows your site already, she will buy it and become a customer.

Using this example, in the old version of Google Analytics the search engine was used to be credited for the conversion, but now, with Multi-Channel Funnels you can see the whole path that Cindy took to convert: Social Network > Referral > Search engine.

To check the Multi-Channel Funnels reports, go to the [Conversions] section.

Then, you will be able to customize it and add the metrics that are relevant to your business.

11. Flow Visualization

Flow Visualization definitely deserves a separate article to present it, but in the meantime I will outline it's benefits.

Google Analytics rolled out two reports, [Visitors Flow], under the Audience section and [Goal Flow], under the Conversion section.

Visitors Flow

The Visitors Flow will display the path that your visitors have taken to navigate through your website.

You will be able to see, based on a selected dimension, such as country source or keyword, the exact path of your visitors and where they stopped to read your content.

On hover, the report displays for each page additional details, like the total number of visits, how many visitors moved to a different page and how many of them dropped the funnel and left.

If you click on a page, you will be able to highlight the traffic that went through that page, explore traffic through that page or display in a popup even more details.

Goal Flow

The Goal Flow report is essentially a better representation of the Funnel Visualization report and contains the same dimensions as the Visitors Flow report.

But the main difference between this and the Visitors Flow is the fact that the Goal Flow report doesn't uses all pages, but the steps you configured in the conversion funnel.

Additionally, you can also use advanced segments to filter your data and get additional insights from the Visitors Flow and Goal Flow reports.

Your turn

In this article I presented 11 tips that you should use for your website and ultimately some of my favorite features in Google Analytics, but now it's your turn to do the same.

What do you like most in Google Analytics and what features/tricks you think that everyone should know about?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

About EugenOprea —
Eugen Oprea helps you convert more traffic into loyal customers using proven techniques that grow your business. Get his Google Analytics course for free to learn more and check his new WordPress plugin Elevatr. He also shares great content on Twitter.

The more I hear about flow visualization, the more I want to start using it and include it in my reports!! Any word on when Google will reinstate the email functionality to Google Analytics? This is the main reason I have switch over to the new version 'full time'.

Useful article. One feature not mentioned, that I am currently finding invaluable, is custom alerts. Alerts are not something I've used to any great extent until fairly recently. However I'm now finding that they allow me to react quicker to events (and even pre-empt) events and to manage more sites more efficiently.

Eugen, these are really basic things that aren't even tricks. These should be called fundamentals or die! I recommend taking Avinash's Google Analytics Course. It costed me $3,500, but you can get the videos for $200/mo

Francisco, you are speaking now from a perspective of someone who has spent $3,500 on a course, but I am sure that you would have seen things differently before.

I know how good Avinash's course is because I was subscribed to it for a while, but not everyone can afford that and not everyone has these basics yet. So, for those who are new to Analytics these can be valuable tricks. :)

This is a nice simple guide to Analytics. Can you post something on analytics and A/B testing? Specifically, I'm racking my brain trying to find help for a client that has ecommerce tracking in analytics by product and want's to a/b and see not change in conversion, but change in revenue by product.

I really do appreciate these tips, unfortunately, when you say "enable site speed", as an example, you do not tell the reader how to do this. I know that the vast majority of people reading your post probably are far beyond this tutorial, but how about the rest of us who are really trying to improve their sites by using Google's rules? While I own and have lots of success with my sites, Google Analytics has lots of information without much help to improve problems or make for better SEO and ranking results. It is great to know these things but not great not knowing how to use them for better results in Google. Any suggestions for the real beginner?Thanks,devin

One thing that you forgot to meantion about is another default value in the event tracking.

If we take a look at the code-line: _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'category', 'action', 'opt_label', 'opt_value', opt_noninteraction]);

The bolded one is about to set the event as "non-interaction" or not and this is the one you forgot about. By default it is considered as a interaction hit (default value then false). However if you like to not consider this as a interaction hit then the value should be set to true. So if opt_noninteraction is set to true then the event hit will not be used in bounce-rate calculation. This can be very usefull when implementing event tracking to your site.

Some great tips here that go beyond many of the basics of Analytics. I've only recently started using Goals so I'm no longer part of 'the majority'! The most common goal for me is a contact enquiry through the site which can be setup when the thank you page is displayed

Wow, I feel like I've been under a mushroom or something. I did not even know some of these tools existed. I have been frustrated for so long about site speed in Webmaster tools forever thinking I could never pinpoint things, and here it is. Thanks for the big help an all the other stuff too!

I have a quick question I've been hunting for an answer to. Can you create an event for when someone shares your content (like a blog post) via a social media share button? I want to be able to set up a goal for social sharing to allow me to track conversion rates for custom segments. Do you have any advice for setting up such an event?

The one thing that's annyoing me at the moment with analytics is the selection of advanced segments. It's irritating to have to scroll through a list of segments each time, does anyone know a way of searching through them quickly? (other CTRL+F ?)

Great post Eugen - I have found site speed and site search very handy tools for improving the user experience on sites, so it is great that you have brought these to everyones attention. As you suggested with site search I use it to make sure the most relevant products are displayed when the users are entering different terms which site search shows me. I also use it to monitor what products are in demand and pass this knowledge on to colleagues when there are products that aren't in our range. As some of the others have commented flow visualization looks a very handy insight, but I too hadn't used it yet oh dear! However thanks to you I will be now - well done!

I agree. Site search is really powerful especially for eCommerce sites because can help you get new product ideas.However, bloggers can also use it effectively because they can find new post ideas using it.

I have to be honest I have mainly used it in relation to ecommerce and product catalogues but applying it to the generation of any new content for a website is a good plan - I like the idea for bloggers and new posts. I guess you could say that essentially it helps highlights any gaps in your content. I also think that site speed is a powerful tool in relation to any websites as you can easily identify slow pages and make easy tweeks/alterations such as reducing image sizes etc to see the impact on load time. I have found that there is a lot of low hanging fruit that can be picked in relation to this especially in a post Panda world.

Great Post! Honestly, I have been using GA for about 4 years. I love the tool and use many different features. The sad thing is much like everything else these days, it is simply information overload. What I mean by that specifically isn’t that GA is too much information, in fact it is awesome. Rather, that everyone has something to say and that every dashboard from every company is being updated all the time in addition to 300 emails a day some worthwhile, some garbage, texts, IMs, calls, etc….

So when GA updated their dashboard, I was like AWWWHHHHH, not another thing to do again…. I have a list of things to learn and do that would make Santa Claus freak out.

But thanks for the update, I actually implemented and tested many of these tips as I was reading the article. Thanks again :-)

Great post. Thanks! One tool that we also use (and love) to help leverage the massive data from GA is called Excellent Analytics. It's an excel plugin that lets you import data from GA into Excel for deeper analysis. It's at www.excellentanalytics.com

Multi-Channel Funnels are truly awesome. Try making a custom channel grouping, splitting up branded and non-branded search terms and/or traffic. And check the source/medium report under Assisted conversions. Best feature of the new interface.

Real-time reports are not really useful. Only nice and funny to check, but it will not deliver a lot of insights (yet). I'm waiting on the day Google will allow segmenting real-time stats!

Really You you have done a fabulous work here as a shared a informative Articles. I have read compelete post in one stop. Really i was aware of some point of GA like 'Track Event.

I have one question about GA. I am using GA for my client website and I am using organic SEO as well as PPC to promote website. In GA all Referral website visitor shown together(organic+paid).so i couln't find out how many visitor come from orgnic and Paid (ppc) so, i want to track only organic referrel Website visitor seperately from GA .

Really interesting article.Thanks. Is always usefull to have a good setup tricks list, it improves knoledge and can be good to keep stored for future references. Onestly I knew 70 % of them but the remain 30% is what make the difference to mu seo plan!

Thanks for sharing the list. Lucky to find we have all the list checked:)

I'm a fan of GA. GA have impoved a lot in the past year. Even two years ago, we used phpMyVisit/Piwik for tracking. But the new GA version drags us back, and it's more and more helpful for us small ecommerce site, especially unbeatable when combined with Adwords data.

I am able to track the visits with conversions for one my websites, but not
able to do the same with other websites, In other websites for visits with
conversation option for visitors flow message I am getting in google
analytic is : “You may have applied such a condition as date range, an
advance segment or goal for which there is no data or there may not be
enough data to show results when sampling is in effect”.

Can anybody provide me solution for this to get visits with conversions data for my other websites. (All are Ecommerce websites)

Since i just created a Google analytic account today am still lost about this whole thing. But is it normal that GA doesn't track my page views right away even if it is visible on GA Real Time Tracker? BTW, my website is made on blogger and i inserted the script on the closing head tag. I hope you could lend me few minutes of your time by answering my poor question. Thank you. site is: http://www.freebiesnetwork.biz/

The old Google Analytics used a city loaction map that used small orange dots. For example, for one visit, the dot was very small but very visible, as was the map's background. In the new version, the map background is almost greyed out and the size of 1 orange dot visit is HUGE. Is there any way to go back to the old city map configuration with the new version of Google Analytics?

I'm just getting into setting up goals and events in GA and would like to figure out if I can compare conversions from new visitors v. returning visitors. Anyone able to pull that metric from their goals?

I am new to the GA consultant world and I am wondering what tips I can get to help my website design clients that are easy for every day "novice" users. My goal is always to "kick a client out of the nest" and allow them to do their own tracking/SEO.

I am having a problem with Google Analytics, i registered one url account for my analytics, what are the steps to register another url account for analytics, can it be done with the same email or does it have to be a different email. Any tutorials i have seen for this are all different even the tutorial inside google analyitics say one thing but when i go to where it directs me its not there.

Could you please show me the steps to find out how to register a new url for analytics.Thank you in advance,Sharon